Arbella Stuart, Countess of Lennox, at Bolsover Castle

Arbella Stuart, Countess of Lennox, at Bolsover Castle

47cm x 35cm Acrylics on board. Framed (no glass.)
Anyone who’s visited Hardwick Hall knows the story of Arbella – product of an ill fated marriage engineered by her ambitious Derbyshire grandmother “Bess of Hardwick”. With Mary Queen of Scots as an aunt, and Elizabeth the “Virgin Queen” paranoid about who would succeed her to the English throne, Arbella’s life was a sad mixture of privilege and prison. I think she liked animal – one of her portraits shows her with parrots and a monkey. I’ve pictured her at the Jacobean home of her uncle William Cavendish – with a classically educated cat.